Deputy Administrative Officer Drew Vetter is leaving the Baltimore County executive suite, the county announced Tuesday, and it has already found his successor.

Rebecca Young is leaving her post as head of the Baltimore City Environmental Control Board, where she supervised 13 staffers with a more than $1.5 million budget, to take the reins from Vetter, whose last day with the county is July 15, according to a news release.

Young, a Dundalk native, “brings a wealth a management experience and a deep knowledge of public safety issues and challenges to her new role,” County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. said in a statement.

Young was tapped to direct the regulatory board that enforces sanitation and other quality of life issues in the city by former Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake in 2014. Young at the time replaced a board director who Rawlings-Blake ousted for overstating her work hours.

The Baltimore Banner thanks its sponsors. Become one.

Before that, Young was a senior prosecutor in charge of animal cruelty cases in the Baltimore City State’s Attorney Office, where she worked for seven years. Young will earn $180,000 and her last day with Baltimore City is July 29. She will join Olszewski’s office on Aug. 8, according to the county.

Vetter, who was among Olszewski’s first key personnel hires announced shortly before he took office in 2019, is resigning after serving as a top aide for more than three years.

His departure comes on the heels of findings released last week by the county’s Inspector General that Olszewski’s administration seemed to give a prominent Baltimore developer special treatment to build a massive private project — which hasn’t been built — without going to an administrative law judge for a public hearing.

Internal emails reviewed for the IG report and obtained through a public records request showed that Olszewski aides, including Vetter, involved themselves in the permitting process for the project. Olszewski has said Vetter is the person to whom the officials in the Department of Permits, Approvals and Inspections report.

Olszewski poached Vetter from the city, where he’d run Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh’s Office of Criminal Justice and served as chief of staff and government affairs director in the Baltimore Police Department.

The Baltimore Banner thanks its sponsors. Become one.

“Drew has been an incredible asset to Baltimore County over the last three and a half years, helping to manage the work of the County with the highest degree of professionalism and integrity,” Olszewski said in a statement.

“The county is better because of his service,” he said.

The county also announced it appointed Sevetra Peoples-Brown, whose served as a special assistant to County Administrative Officer Stacy Rodgers since 2019, as its interim Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer. Peoples-Brown is replacing Troy Williams following his departure.

Williams was the first to fill the role after Olszewski created the position shortly after he first took office.

taylor.deville@thebaltimorebanner.com

The Baltimore Banner thanks its sponsors. Become one.

Read more: